When I was a little boy, I had a lazy eye. My mother often looked into it and shouted: “Why can’t you be more like your other eye? That one’s responsible! Always looking where it’s supposed to look!”

My ophthalmologist suggested I use an eye patch. I pretended I was a pirate and looted neighbors’ houses for booty. If caught, I’d attempt to cut off their lips so I could fry them up and feed it to them.

“Why would you do something that sick?” my mother asked.

“I read about it in a book about pirates,” I told her.

My mother was so furious, she burned all my books and forced me to watch television every night.

But with my eye patch, nothing had any depth.